EC2 Purchasing Options Infographic

EC2 Purchasing Options

Optimize your cloud spend by matching your workload characteristics to the right AWS pricing model.

01. The Decision Inputs

Is your traffic steady, spikey, or completely unpredictable?

Do you need the server for minutes, months, or 3+ years?

Can you switch instance families or regions mid-term?

Are you prioritizing lowest cost or zero commitment?

Note: Spot instances offer the highest discount but can be reclaimed by AWS at any time.

Highest Flexibility

Pay for compute capacity by the second. No long-term commitments. Best for short-term, irregular workloads.

Deepest Discount

Spare AWS capacity at up to 90% off. AWS can terminate these with a 2-minute warning. Best for stateless, fault-tolerant jobs.

1 or 3 Year Term

Standard: Highest discount, fixed attributes.
Convertible: Change instance family/type mid-term.

Modern Standard

Commit to a consistent amount of usage (e.g., $10/hour). Automatically applies across EC2, Fargate, and Lambda.

Option	Payment	Best For…	Risk Level
On-Demand	No Upfront	New applications, unpredictable spikes	Low
Spot	No Upfront	Batch processing, CI/CD, Data analysis	High (Interruption)
Standard RI	Upfront/Partial/None	Steady-state, predictable workloads	Medium (Locked-in)
Savings Plans	Upfront/Partial/None	Multi-service usage, evolving architecture	Medium (Dollar commitment)